"All people deserve healthy ecosystems and clean water. Recognizing the inherent rights of nature to exist and flourish is the best way to protect this. Protecting one watershed or regulating toxins one at a time isn't enough. All New Yorkers are connected through our water, and so this bill protects all of us."

--Patrick Burke, New York Assembly

WATERTODAY learned more from the Community Environmental Legal DefenseFund (CELDF) Education Director, Ben Price.

By Suzanne Forcese

WT: Please tell us about your involvement with The Rights of Nature.

Price: Since writing the first law to recognize legal rights of ecosystems in 2006, CELDF has partnered with more than 200 communities across the United States to enact community rights and rights of nature laws.

The Rights of Nature movement is gaining momentum around the world as global warming, species extinction, fresh water scarcity, and climate-driven migration are all getting worse. Meanwhile, the U.S. is being left behind. For states to take on these issues in the absence of federal action could be a game-changer.

WT: Should this New York Assembly Bill become law, what would that mean?

Price:  If it becomes law, New York Assembly Bill AO5156A, the Great Lakes and State Waters Bill of Rights, would recognize “unalienable and fundamental rights to exist, persist, flourish, naturally evolve, regenerate and be restored” for the Great Lakes and other watersheds and ecosystems throughout New York State.

The bill would also enshrine the right to a clean and healthy environment for all people and ecosystems within the State, the right to freedom from “toxic trespass,” and would prohibit the monetization of the waters of New York State.

WT: What is toxic trespass? And what is your involvement?

Price: CELDF is helping the first communities in the country to prohibit chemical trespass, which occurs when people and the natural environment are harmed by chemical agents that are forced into communities, through practices such as aerial spraying and industrial waste disposal.

Chemical trespass can happen in many ways, but in recent years, the biggest trespasses have been the industrial practice of fracking, as well as pesticidal agents that contaminate land, air, and soil – thus contaminating us and surrounding ecosystems. Although the EPA and CDC are appointed to protect people and the natural environment from such trespasses, these systems, in fact, allow the trespass to occur, and regulate the “legal” amounts of these chemicals.

WT: Can you clarify how this is “allowed” please.

Price: In 1958, the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act formally articulated the risks relative to chemical exposure, but the law was reversed when claims that the hazardous materials themselves were not the issue, but rather exposure to the hazards was the issue. This effectively took culpability away from the cause of the hazard (the use of toxic chemicals by corporations) and made it the responsibility of citizens to minimize contact with dangerous chemicals that corporations produce. Currently, chemical trespass is becoming more and more unavoidable.

WT: Representative Burke previously introduced an earlier draft of this bill in 2022. The new version incorporates feedback from the community andexpands ecological rights beyond the Great Lakes watershed to include all the waters of New York.

Price: It also empowers municipalities and counties to democratically enact rights of nature laws for their local ecosystems. Many states have forbidden this practice. In addition, the new bill contains provisions to protect treaty rights for indigenous people and tribal nations in New York.

This measure received overwhelming support in Burke’s constituent survey, including from Dr. Kirk Scirto, who received his medical doctorate at the University of Buffalo, teaches public health in the United States and internationally, and works as a clinician for the Tonawanda Seneca Nation.

"This bill means communities having the freedom to finally decide what corporations can and can't do in their backyards,” Dr. Scirto says.

WT: The bill is of cross-border interest. Recently CELDF was part of a symposium in Toronto. Can you elaborate on the concerns of both Canada and the US.

Price: Lake Erie and Lake Ontario provide drinking water to 6.2 million New Yorkers. All told, the Great Lakes provide drinking water for more than 40 million people, contain 95% of all the surface freshwater in the United States, and make up the largest freshwater ecosystem on the planet.

But this ecosystem is struggling. According to experts, billions of gallons of raw sewage entering the lakes, increasing toxic algae blooms, invasive species, global warming, and both historic and ongoing industrial pollution represent serious threats to the ecosystem and human health.

According to Dr. Sherri Mason from Gannon University in Erie Pennsylvania over 22 million pounds of plastic are dumped in the Great Lakes annually.

Experts such as Daniel Macfarlane, Professor of Environment and Sustainability at Western Michigan University, say that the people of the U.S. have become “complacent” after early efforts to clean up the Great Lakes curtailed obvious issues such as the Cuyahoga, Buffalo, and Chicago rivers catching fire due to petrochemical waste dumping in the 1960’s.

WT: CELDF and Assemblyman Burke also worked together on the Lake Erie Bill of Rights.

Price: In August 2014, a toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie linked to fertilizer and excrement from industrial farms shut down the drinking water supply to the city of Toledo, Ohio, home to 270,000 people, for 3 days.

This led to the community to overwhelmingly vote to pass a similar law to the one introduced by Assemblyman Burke called the Lake Erie Bill of Rights, which was also drafted by CELDF. The story of the pollution entering Lake Erie, the 2014 water shutdown, and the effort to protect the lake was profiled in a 2024 documentary produced by artist Andrea Bowers and titled What We Do toNature, We Do to Ourselves

WT: Please tell us about CELDF’s global reach.

Price: Recognizing the legal rights of nature is becoming increasingly popular around the world. Since CELDF assisted the people of Ecuador to amend their constitution to include rights of nature in 2008, the movement has seen hundreds of other laws passed in countries like Columbia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Just days ago, the Lewes District Council in East Sussex, England affirmed the OuseRiver Charter, recognizing for the first time the rights of an English river.

The U.S. is lagging behind these international efforts, with only local communities asserting the rights of nature thus far. CELDF’s consulting director Tish O’Dell has worked with many of these communities.

WT: WT has had many conversations with Tish – and she has left us with some inspiration and hope --

Price: In Tish’s words --

“Brave people and communities have attempted to promote the new idea of rights of nature and challenge the current system, but we have never found a state legislator courageous enough to introduce such a law at the state level,” she says. “Representative Burke is the first to build on this grassroots movement for change.”

What We Do to Nature, We Do to Ourselves - Full Documentary